Keswick, Darlington, Saltburn & Durham

Two nights at the in-laws’ beautiful house in Keswick saw me on Derwentwater’s shores on a wet Good Friday. Here’s me looking southward across the bay beyond Friar’s Crag …

… southwest from the same spot, into a Borrowdale I fell in love with sixty-three years ago in similar weather in the early summer of ’63 …

… and finally due south down the lake toward Grange-in, Seatoller and Seathwaite; gateways to Styhead and Honister Passes, Great and Green Gable, Wasdale and the Scafells.

Later the sun broke through to light up Skiddaw to the north.

In the garden a Jackdaw visits …

… as do tits coal, great and in this case blue …

… plus a doe rabbit with six kittens to feed

… while nocturnal hedgehogs are caught on infra red motion sensitive camera, and all must be on high alert to a much discouraged tabby, and even the jackdaws can fall prey to your local and not so friendly neighbourhood sparrowhawk.

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Next day we drove east, over the treacherous A66 to Scotch Corner for three days in Darlington with step niece and nephew. Easter Sunday saw us in Saltburn.

Saltburn has the UK’s oldest functioning sea-balanced funicular

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On Easter Monday tragedy struck in the form of missed opportunity born of miscommunication. We drove a few miles upstream to walk the Tees north of Darlington: a pleasant enough stroll …

… but on the way we passed Darlington’s Tees Cottage Pumping Station, now an industrial heritage museum. As it happens, on Easter Mondays enthusiastic, knowledgeable and aptly clad volunteers …

… operate those wonderful pumping engines and answer questions. As we passed the place, its signage advertising the open day, I thought to suggest a revised plan but held my tongue for fear of Jackie’s low tolerance of serendipitous change.

Ever been on one of those group rambles you found tedious, but kept quiet on the assumption everyone else was having a whale of a time? Only to discover, on post mortem that evening, that every one of your companions had felt the same! I wouldn’t put this in that category but you grasp my point, I’m sure. Not until we’d got back hours later did I discover that step nephew in front passenger seat – a qualified pharmacist and multi talented aesthete of many interests and endless curiosity – had voiced interest as we whizzed past to pre-programmed destination (the Roman Fort at Piercebridge on the Tees) which I, in the back and with hearing in no small rate of decline, hadn’t registered.

Better late than never. Decanting Jackie so she could take step-niece to station for return to London, I took the wheel to get step-nephew and self back to Tees Cottage. With forty-five minutes to take in what could easily have occupied four or five most agreeable hours, I grabbed my shots and whatever factuals my rushed brain could absorb, while mentally vowing to revisit at the next opportunity. That, alas, won’t be till Easter 2027, with no guarantee of a repeat of such sunlit conducivity.

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Tuesday saw us in Durham, also most agreeable …

Laurel in bloom, snapped while walking the Wear below cathedral and castle

… before heading back that evening to Steel City House.

Happy days, though tomorrow I’ll be back at the grindstone apropos Israel’s determination, already measured in hundreds of Lebanese civilian lives, to sabotage Trump’s off-ramp.

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